


Not Quite Broken

by couldbecourfeyrac



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anti wanda maximoff, both pep and tony are bi and it shows, but only slightly bc i love them, helens visions mom and you can fight me, i just really need tonynat okay, im here to fix their relationship, im still bitter about civil war, maria is Very Gay, nat and tony are basically siblings okay, natasha romanoff is part of the tony stark defense squad, natasha romanoff the queen of righteous anger, none of them are straight (except wanda), pepper and rhodey are amazing and deserve the world, peter parker is absolutely precious, slightly anti team cap, we dont do canon compliancy here sorry, well most of them at least
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-01 13:16:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15774858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldbecourfeyrac/pseuds/couldbecourfeyrac
Summary: In which Natasha Romanoff does not run away, and helps save Tony Stark in the process.





	1. Chapter 1

“They’re coming for you.”

Natasha paused, taking a moment to stop herself from reacting out of anger, to take a deep breath and think things out and weigh her choices instead of snapping at Tony and walking out.

What would running do for her?

Sure, she would have to deal with less paperwork, less interrogations, wouldn’t be put under house arrest or in jail, but was it worth it?

Steve had Bucky, and Sam, and the rest-she didn’t doubt that he’d break them out of the Raft.

Tony had Pepper, and Rhodey, and his other found family, but no original Avengers.

Except for her.

Natasha had tried to keep them all together, to offer a logical argument, and then to make sure that they didn’t kill each other, that they got the chance to stop, to walk away.

None of it had worked.

All she could do now was try to fix the wreckage that remained.

She could handle the government.

And Natasha was tired of running, anyways.

“I know. I know they are.”

“You planning on resisting arrest?”

Natasha smiled sadly, and shook her head. “No. No, I’m not.”

She turned and left, leaving Tony slightly stunned, and with even more questions about her than he had had before. He hadn't thought that was possible.


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha fucking hated house arrest.

She knew she should be grateful she only got house arrest and not worse, as Ross kept helpfully reminding her anytime they talked, but she couldn’t help but hate it. She felt trapped, and she _despised_ feeling trapped-especially now, when she knew she could run and not have to deal with this, when she knew she could disappear without them managing to find even the slightest trace of her anywhere, ever again. She could be anonymous, and far, far away from this entire mess.

But she didn’t run.

She couldn’t bring herself to, not after she had heard the basics of the fight in Siberia. She wasn’t told in person by any of the people who had once been her family, not by Pepper or Rhodey or Vision or Happy. (Not by Tony either, though she would never expect him to.)

No, she was informed on what happened by the media, just like every average citizen, though Maria had helped fill in a few details.

Speaking of Maria, she visited-or at least tried to-every week, bringing books or files or stories about missions or Fury. Sometimes they went out together, to the few limited places Nat was allowed to go, though it quickly grew boring and they retreated back inside. It was nice to just be able to talk to someone, Nat thought, and the two had never been closer. House arrest would have been a lot more unbearable without Maria’s visits.

Maria wasn’t retired, exactly, but she was working a lot less than before. (Which wasn’t that hard, actually, you could hold down two or three small jobs and still work less than she had when she was the Deputy Director of SHIELD.) She’d gotten herself an apartment in Manhattan, and she usually worked from home, organizing files and reading mission reports and issuing orders. Every once in awhile, she went on a mission herself. But mainly she lived a fairly civilian life, befriending her neighbors, visiting Natasha, and hiding her crush on a certain blonde by the name of Sharon Carter.

Sharon was a frequent topic of discussion during Maria’s visits, but they talked about other, more serious things, too.

Like the Accords, and Tony.

Occasionally, Maria brought up ideas for how Natasha could try to fix her relationship with him. Most of the time, Natasha brushed off her attempts, but sometimes she didn’t.

“I think you’re going to need to start the conversation, Nat,” Maria said, curled up on Natasha’s couch with a cup of coffee in one hand. “You two need to talk. It’ll take time, and effort, but I think you two will get back to being friends eventually. He’ll understand why you did what you did. He doesn’t have many reasons to keep you away.”

Natasha scoffed, sitting across from Maria in an old armchair. “He has plenty of reasons to,” she said. “I betrayed him. More than once. That’s all he’s seen me do, he has no reason to expect anything else. He said so himself. He thinks being an imposter sticks in the DNA.” And maybe it did. She knew that more than pretty much anyone else, knew how hard it was to be yourself when you had been so many other people, knew what it was like to question if there even was a her, or if there was just layers and layers of masks and lies. “People tell the truth when they’re angry, Maria.”

“Not always. People also say what they know will hurt, even when they don’t think it’s true. Anger can cloud the mind.”

Maria looked so calm sitting there, and sounded so smart and rational, that Natasha almost wanted to hit her. She was right, Nat knew she was. And she did want to apologize, she really did, she wanted to reach out and talk to Tony and at least attempt to fix things, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She wouldn’t admit it, but she was scared, scared of Tony rejecting her apology and pushing her away, which would be entirely fair. Natasha had spent her life hiding and lying, avoiding pain by not opening up and not getting attached, and the risk of pain was just too great, too intimidating.

She had been through so much already, felt so much pain, and the last thing she needed was more of it.

But so had Tony.

And if her saying something might help him… She would try, at least. Try to write to him, or to call him, and if it was too much for her, she would give up and stay away from Tony, hope that not being confronted by her and not seeing her again would be enough to help him get through the last time she’d ever betrayed him.

Because it would be the last time, if he let her back into his life again.

“Alright,” Natasha said with a sigh. “Fine, you’re right. I’ll try to talk to him. Or write to him, or something like that. But I won’t promise that I won’t give up.”

Maria smiled, accepting this small victory. “Good. Now, can we talk about Sharon’s new haircut? Because _damn.”_

Natasha grinned, laughing a little. This was good, she decided. Long talks and coffee with Maria, curled up in her living room, warm and safe and happy, if only for now. She could survive with just this, if she had to.

God knows she’d thrived with less.

\-----

Natasha set down her pen, ignoring the aching pain in her head and the feeling in her chest that meant she was going to have to stop herself from crying, and sealed the envelope, placing it on the counter so she would remember to take it to the post office tomorrow, when the sun was out and she had had a full night of sleep.

Of course, she might have talked herself out of sending the letter by then, but she was okay with that possibility.

\-----

She sent the letter.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony read the letter, and then read it again, torn between suspicion and disbelief and surprise and happiness.

_Tony-_

_I don’t presume to think that I have the right to your forgiveness, but I’m writing this anyways. I went into that fight in Berlin wanting to protect my family, to make sure that if we couldn’t stay together we’d at least all stay alive, and I walked out successful. I’m sorry that I couldn’t bring myself to stop Rogers and Barnes. And I’m sorry that I betrayed you in not stopping them. You deserve better than that. You deserve a family and teammates you can trust, like Rhodes, and Pepper._

_I suppose you were right when you said that being an imposter sticks in the DNA, even if that wasn’t why I did what I did in Berlin. I’ve lived my life lying and betraying. Doing anything else still feels new to me, and it’s something I’m still working on, though that’s not an excuse for hurting you._

_I heard about Siberia. Doubt it makes you feel any better, but I told Rogers to fuck off when he called me for help._

_Regretted it, but regret isn’t anything new to me._

_The government will give him and the others amnesty eventually, I think we both know that._

_He’ll try to apologize. Might seem a bit hypocritical for me to say this, but…I wouldn’t accept it if I were you, not if it seems like he doesn’t mean it, like it isn’t genuine. The Avengers took advantage of you, they-well, we-used you for your tech and your skills, and a lot of us didn’t bother to actually get close to you outside of missions. I think you’re more than smart enough to stop that from happening again._

_I don’t expect for us to immediately be close again, hell, I don’t really expect a reply, but if it’s at all possible I would like for us to start talking to each other again. You were family to me, though I didn’t always show it. Though I didn’t ever show it._

_I don’t regret not stopping Rogers and Barnes. I think T’Challa would have killed Barnes if he’d been given the chance in Berlin, and despite his past ~~in the Room~~ with Hydra, I don’t believe he deserves to die._

_I do regret hurting you, though._

_-NR_

The letter was so open, so honest, when Natalie or Natasha or Natalia or whichever name she used had never been, that Tony could physically _feel_ how hard this had been for her, what it had been like for her to push aside her walls for a moment and write like that.

And she’d done it for him.

And now, now that he wasn’t as angry as he’d been, wasn’t as caught up in the pain and the sadness and the rage, he could understand what she had been trying to do.

He could understand why she hadn’t stopped Rogers and Barnes.

Tony wanted to let her in again. He really did.

But there was something that stopped him from calling her up and asking her to move back into the Compound again, though he wasn’t quite sure whether it was common sense speaking out from underneath the happiness or the new layer of ice he had picked up after Siberia, the one only Pepper and Rhodey and Peter and Happy had managed to crack.

Natasha was the triple imposter, after all. She lived and breathed lies, she had been raised in them, they were her weapons and her god. She’d admit it herself, probably.

How was he supposed to know that this wasn’t another lie?

There was no way he could, he realized. Not now. Not yet. Bringing her back into the fold would have required trust, and Tony might have still loved her but he did not trust her, he never fully had before.

Tony would still call her, though.

He would let her talk.

Get to know her again.

Maybe see if they could move on, but not start over, they could never start over.

And then maybe, just maybe, they’d eventually learn to trust each other again.

Because he was certain that she didn’t quite trust him, either.


	4. Chapter 4

Tony had procrastinated many things in his time, but calling Natasha was not one of them. He tapped his leg nervously as the phone rang, staring out of the window at the city and praying she’d pick up. And she did.

“Hello?”

Natasha sounded half-asleep and tired, -well, of course she was, Tony had called her at one in the morning, after all, which he was already mentally kicking himself for- but it was good to hear her voice again, and he felt himself relaxing.

“Hey, Romanoff.”

There was a pause, and then she said, “Tony. I assume you got the letter, then.”

“Mhm. Snail mail, really? I thought you were more up to date on tech than Rogers.”

There was an edge in the way he said Rogers, one that had been there for awhile now, since Siberia, and one that Natasha recognized, and found painfully familiar, though she wasn’t entirely sure why.

“I am, trust me. Didn’t think any other form of contact would have a chance to get through to you, though. Letters are easier to classify as your basic fan mail. Figured it was the only way to get the message past Pepper, really.”

Tony wasn’t sure if he had imagined the ache in her voice when she said Pepper’s name, but judging by glances he had seen and conversations he had accidentally interrupted, he would almost be willing to bet that he hadn’t.

“…okay, yeah, I see your point. You could have tried to talk to her first, though.”

Natasha almost laughed. “You really think she would have listened?”

Yeah, he definitely wasn’t imagining the ache.

“Maybe. I’m not sure. She’s always had a soft spot for you, and you know it.”

And she did know it, she really did, but Nat also knew how Pepper worked, and she knew her priorities and where her loyalty lay.

She knew she never would have gotten this call, no matter how Pepper had felt about her. (She didn’t even entertain the notion that Pepper might still feel that way; Natasha Romanoff was many things, but an optimist was not one of them.)

“Maybe so. But I think she cares about you more, especially now, after…everything.”

“You heard about Siberia, then?”

“Everyone heard about Siberia, Tony. Couldn’t look at anything news-related without seeing something related to it. It was nice to see so many people taking your side, though I doubt the constant coverage made things easier for you.”

“Yeah. Nobody gave you any details, then? You just got the civilian version?”

Now she did laugh. “Maria told me bits and pieces, but did you really expect anyone to tell me anything? I’m a traitor who’s under house arrest, people aren’t exactly lining up to give me reports.”

Tony winced at the casual way she said this, knowing that she didn’t mean to make him feel bad, though he still felt bad anyways, as usual.

“Don’t call yourself that.”

“What, a traitor? It’s true.” How Natasha had managed to say that so casually, how she had kept the pain out of her voice, she would never know. Calling her a traitor was the easiest way to hurt her -mainly because she would accept it as true. Because a traitor was what she was raised to be, all she had ever been, and, really, her handlers in the Room shouldn’t have been surprised when their perfect weapon did exactly what they taught her to and betrayed them.

“Tasha.”

The old nickname slipped out so easily and sounded so right that it surprised both of them slightly, a callback to days of easy trust and quiet friendship.

“…okay, fine. I won’t call myself a traitor.” _Doesn’t stop it from being true, though,_ she silently added.

“Thank you.”

“Of course. So…how are you?”

Natasha didn’t explicitly mention Siberia, didn’t need to, because Tony knew immediately what she meant. He had to choose his words carefully, make sure to tell her enough without telling her too much, because she had always been able to get him to say more than he wanted to about how he was and what he was feeling.

“I’m…pretty fucked up. It’s slowly getting a little better, though. Not much, but a little.”

There was a moment of tense silence, and then she said something so quietly that he almost didn’t hear it.

“I’m sorry.”

An apology from Natasha Romanoff, an actual, genuine apology, devoid of mockery or sarcasm, formed by actual guilt and sorrow and pain rather than a lecture and an order was a rare and precious thing indeed. And Tony knew that, of course he did, he knew everything about her-at least, everything that she would let people know. Nobody knew everything about Natasha.

Not even her, really.

And so Tony didn’t know what to say to her.

Because he knew she was sorry. And, yes, he could accept her apology, but he couldn’t completely forgive her, not yet. But he’d be damned if he threw her emotions and openness back in her face.

“It’s okay, Tasha. I know you are. You don’t need to apologize.”

“Yes, I do.”

And, well, he couldn’t really argue with that.


End file.
